


The Difference That Divides Us

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-26
Updated: 2006-06-26
Packaged: 2019-02-16 02:28:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13044609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Sam wants to study for his AP exams. Dean wants to hunt a werewolf. Some things happen. Nothing really changes.





	The Difference That Divides Us

“Where’s your gear, Sammy?”

Sam looks up from the massive textbook in his lap. There are papers scattered all around him, and above the dark circles, his eyes shine with that academic fanaticism that always gives Dean the creeps. “I’ve told you, Dean,” he says wearily, a whine tingeing voice. “I’m not coming.”

Dean leans against the back of a chair. “Why not?”

Sam heaves an impatient sigh. “I’ve _told_ you — I’ve got my AP US exam tomorrow. First thing.”

Dean shrugs. “We’ll be back. It’s just a werewolf.”

“That’s not the _point_ ,” says Sam wearily, looking back down at his book. “The point is that I need to _study_ if I want a five on this thing.”

“Yeah, well, you should’ve studied earlier. Dad’ll kill you if you skip out on another hunt.”

“You said it yourself, Dean — it’s just a werewolf.” Sam’s clearly trying to mask his building frustration, but he’s still inept at that. Dean doubts he’ll ever improve. He and Dad are too similar like that.

“Yeah, well, Dad wants you to come. And like I said — you should’ve studied earlier.”

“I’ve _been_ studying! For days!” Sam smacks a hand down on his book. “Dean, this _matters_ , it might be what decides whether I get into a good college or not —”

“Hang on,” says Dean. “Hang on. Who said anything about college?”

Sam flushes. It’s obvious he didn’t mean to say that. “ _I_ did,” he shoots back after a moment. Then, more quietly, he adds, “If you tell Dad —”

He falls silent. Dean taps his foot on the floor, not letting himself think about this yet, no absorbing the implications until he’s got time alone to deal with them. Finally, he asks, “Then what? What’ll you do, geek boy?”

Sam looks away, reddening further. Dean knows that look. His brother’s got nothing.

He deliberates, biting his lip thoughtfully. Finally, he says, “If you come on the hunt tonight, I won’t say anything to Dad.”

Sam gives his books a longing look, but he knows he’s got no choice. “Fine.” Pushing his work gently aside so as not to disturb anything, he gets to his feet with a stretch. “But you’re paying for all the scholarship money I don’t get if I fail this thing.”

Dean draws a card from his pocket, flips it up into the air and catches it, grinning. “No,” he remarks, turning it to inspect the name. “But Adrian Collins will.”

Sam groans and goes to find his gear. “Thanks, Dean,” he says quietly on his way past.

“Don’t thank me,” says Dean, pocketing the card. “I just don’t wanna have to listen to you and Dad chewing each other out again for the third time this week.”

\---

It should be an easy hunt, but Sam’s exhausted, his reflexes too slow. When he trips over a root, he falls and lies there for a moment, too tired to get up or call for the others to wait.

Then he feels claws tear into his leg, teeth into his back, and he’s screaming too loud to even know if he’s still alive before everything goes black.

\---

“Stupid, Sammy,” is the first thing he hears when he wakes up. “That was incredibly stupid.”

“Dad?” Sam’s voice is gravelly and painful. He forces his eyelids apart, but they immediately snap back together — the hospital room is too bright. His body is one massive hurt.

“If you were too tired to hunt, you should’ve told your brother and me,” says Dad severely. “And you know better — I _know_ I’ve taught you better than to open yourself up like that, even if you are exhausted. You hear me? I’ve fought demons after days without sleep, Sam, this is serious —”

There’s a great deal Sam wants to say, the injustice of it all boiling somewhere in his chest, trying to burst out in an indignant rant. “Shut up,” is all he can muster.

“What was that?”

“I said shut up,” Sam rasps.

“Sam, listen to me, if you —”

“Dad, would you let me talk to him? Alone?” Dean’s voice has never been so welcome.

John pauses, then sighs. “All right, son. If you can figure out —” He stops, sighs again. Footsteps, then the opening and closing of a door. Silence.

“That thing ripped you up pretty bad,” says Dean.

“Mm,” Sam replies.

“We almost weren’t fast enough. Didn’t want to shoot ‘cause we might’ve hit you.”

Sam considers what to say. There isn’t much. He finally settles for an “oh.”

“Why didn’t you fight it?” says Dean, voice rough.

“I,” starts Sam, then realizes he doesn’t know and stops.

Quick footsteps crossing the room, and then hands on his shoulders, shaking him — gently, though, not enough to make his injuries hurt any more than they already are, even though Sam can feel the pent-up anger and fear in Dean’s grip. “Dammit, Sammy, do you realize how scared you had us back there? The doctors wouldn’t tell us anything, just rushing around and saying something about how they couldn’t operate till your blood pressure went down and yelling at each other about how they needed to stabilize you —” His voice is rough and raw. It sounds a bit like Sam feels.

“D’you have some water?”

He hears Dean moving around in the room, and a moment later there’s a cup against his lip. He swallows gratefully. “What story did you feed them?”

“Some bullshit about a real big dog. Shit, Sam.”

Suddenly Sam realizes something, and his eyes fly open as he sits bolt upright, or tries to — his back screams with pain and he flops back into bed. “Dean — shit, Dean, I’m missing my exam!”

There’s a silence, and then Dean bursts into hysterical laughter, wheezing and gripping the edge of Sam’s bed. “Your — your _exam_ — Sammy, you are such a fucking nerd —”

“Dean, it’s not —”

“It’s _Saturday_ , Sam.”

Sam stops. Lets the words sink in. “Shit.” 

“Tell me about it.”

“You mean I’ve been out for a — for a fucking _week_?”

“Almost.”

“And that means I’ve missed my English exam, too — Dean, if I’m not out of here by Monday —”

“Fat chance.” There’s an edge of hysteria to Dean’s voice. His face looks like some bizarre mix between anger, amusement, and fear.

“You’ve _got_ to be kidding me.”

“Do you even realize what that thing did to you?” He starts listing off injuries, counting them out on his fingers. Sam takes inventory of his body — yes, that definitely hurts, and that, and that.

“Shit,” he says again, when Dean’s done. “And you couldn’t —”

“You know how hard it is to kill one of those things when it’s got a victim with it,” says Dean.

Sam slumps back, defeated. “There’s really no chance? What about — what about Friday? D’you think I might be out by then?”

Dean’s expression says he doubts it.

“Shit,” says Sam, yet again. He really needs to stop it, but that word seems to about sum up his life at the moment.

“I’m supposed to be yelling at you,” says Dean.

Sam feels hostility rise in his throat. “Yeah? How come?”

Dean shrugs. “You _were_ stupid, you know.”

“Sure,” says Sam, turning away from him in the bed. “Sure. Tell me about it.”

Dean sighs angrily. Then his footsteps recede across the room, the door opens and clicks firmly shut, and Sam’s alone.

\---

Sam’s a good brother and all, and Dean loves him — really, he does — but sometimes that boy can get him _so pissed off_ it’s not even human.

Like now, for instance. Sam’s lying in bed, bemoaning the fact that he’s currently missing his AP Latin exam — and seriously, Dean’s glad Sam’s gotten so good with exorcisms, but beyond that, _who gives a damn about fucking Latin?_ — and in general being the most obnoxious little brother in the history of the planet.

“And Dad,” says Sam. “I don’t think he even _cares_ — he hasn’t visited since I woke up, even — Dean, he doesn’t give a damn about what I want, it’s all hunting, hunting, hunting, why should you care about anything else?”

“He sent us to school,” says Dean, voice leaden, knowing his arguments are pointless. “He did that.”

“Only so the law wouldn’t come after him,” snorts Sam.

“Don’t be stupid. You know as well as I do that the law doesn’t matter.”

“Whatever. My point is — he doesn’t care what _I_ —”

“And what makes you think _I_ do?” Dean shouts suddenly, on his feet, fists clenched. “What makes you think I’m your — your ally against him or something? Tell me, Sammy, I want to know!”

Sam mouths soundlessly for a moment, then swallows. “You’re my brother,” he says quietly.

And that’s so unfair, that’s appealing to Dean’s stupid emotions in the worst possible way, but Sam doesn’t know how Dad’s been these couple of weeks — silent, stony, sometimes even crying to himself without making a sound over his coffee and newspaper in the morning. It’s been a struggle to make him eat, and Dean doesn’t think he’s been sleeping much. Today, he’s on a hunt, the first since Sam got mauled. Part of Dean wonders if he’s coming back.

“Yeah,” he says, turning away, drawing back. “Yeah, and he’s my Dad.”

\---

Sam’s discharged just after Dad gets back from a hunt he’s been off on for a couple days, looking tired and scruffy but not too bad, considering. They clear out the next day, heading east — there’s something in Kentucky Dad really wants to check out, and he thinks it might be a good place for them to spend a month or so over the summer. Sam puts up a hell of a fight — he’s _going_ to stay, he’s _going_ to make up his exams, whether Dad likes it or not.

Dad doesn’t even yell back. Sam goes to Kentucky.

“I can’t believe it,” he tells Dean later, sitting in the passenger seat of the Impala — Dad’s driving his new pickup. “I just — doesn’t it ever get you mad? That he expects us to devote our whole lives to him and his cause?”

“Our cause,” says Dean.

Sam snorts. “You used to have potential, you know. You’re smart enough; you could’ve taken Honors, AP classes, racked up some high scores. Did you even take the SATs? And football—that was really your thing, wasn’t it? Up until Dad made you quit.”

“Dad never had to make me quit anything.” There’s a quiet, tightly coiled fury in Dean’s voice that Sam chooses to ignore. “That’s the difference between you and me.”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “That you don’t fight.”

Brakes screech, and the Impala veers suddenly to the side of the road. Before Sam can move, one of his arms his pinned behind his suddenly throbbing back by the wrist, the other caught against the seat, Dean’s hand on his neck forcing his face down. There’s grit all over the floor; Dad’s probably going to make him clean out the cars soon.

“Here’s a piece of advice, Sammy,” says Dean from above him, breathing heavily. “Might come in handy at _college_. When you don’t know what you’re talking about — _shut the fuck up_.”

“Everything all right, boys?”

Sam’s head snaps up as far as it can to see Dad leaning out the window of the pickup, reversed to come up alongside them. Dean releases Sam promptly. “Yessir.”

“Good.” The pickup’s engine revs, and it accelerates ahead of them. Dean gives Sam a _don’t you dare_ look, shifts the gear, and hits the gas.

Sam’s back is still hurting to high hell, but he can’t help but feel smug that this is exactly what he means — and Dean knows it. 

\---

Watching Sam, Dean can tell that his various injuries are still killing him, and as pissed as he might be at his little brother, he can’t help but ache for him. The little hitch in his step makes Dean realize how much grace there is in Sam’s normal gait; the stiffness of his movement highlights its usual fluidity. When he undresses at night, the scars, ugly, pink, half-healed ridges of flesh, stand out against his smooth skin and make its rippling motion over hard muscle catch in a way Dean _knows_ is painful —not that Sam complains. Dean’s always thought him whiny. Suddenly, his opinion of his kid brother rises several notches. Watching Sam battle against his body throughout each day wrenches his gut. Occasionally, it sends spikes of guilty heat a bit lower than that, but he won’t think about those moments, except to occasionally wonder if Sam’s right and their upbringing really has been as fucked up as all that.

Dean goes after a poltergeist with Dad on their second day in Kentucky. It’s a particularly nasty one, and they get home late that night considerably worse for the wear. Dad passes out promptly on the couch, and Dean lets Sam help him into bed, vaguely aware of the enormous, cool hands cleaning and dressing the gash on his forehead where the thing bashed him into a counter, easing him into the best position on the bed.

He’s got something of a concussion, Sam announces to him the next day. Should be fine, but he needs to be careful, take it easy.

Dean feels like throwing up. Instead, he falls asleep for another four hours.

Dad’s taken to assigning Sam the menial chores, to build up his strength again and maybe grind a bit of obedience into him, but once his both his sons are injured, he seems to do everything himself — an interesting phenomenon, but Dean’s never been into psychoanalysis. Sam wonders what the rationale behind it is, but Dean points out there probably is none, and that’s the end of that.

Instead, he spends a couple days cooped up with Sam, and outside of the quick jerk-offs in the bathroom from time to time, which have by now become part of his routine, he finds it not actually that bad. The two of them haven’t spent this much time together in a long time, not since Dad started taking Dean on hunts, and with Sam considerably less bitchy than he was in the hospital, just hanging out, lazing around the apartment — it becomes enjoyable.

On the other hand, all this laziness is giving Dean plenty of time to think all he wants or doesn’t want about Sam, college, and other not-so-pressing affairs.

“You know,” he says one afternoon, stretched out on the sofa with stuffing and springs spilling out of one corner, “there’s one thing I don’t get.”

“What?” Sam looks up at him from his game of Solitaire.

“Why you’re so intent on leaving,” Dean says with a casual shrug. Sure, he can understand that Sam gets pissed at Dad, but running away isn’t the way to deal with that — is it?

“I’m not — it’s not about _leaving_ ,” says Sam. 

“Yeah? Then what is it about?” challenges Dean. He’s getting hostile; he doesn’t mean to. He just can’t help it when Sam talks like that.

“It’s about _college_ , Dean. It’s about — it’s about life, and success, and —”

“Running away,” Dean says flatly, diplomacy be damned.

“ _No_ ,” says Sam. “No — you just don’t get it, do you?”

“No, I don’t,” says Dean, sitting up — slowly, for his head’s sake. “I don’t, Sammy. Tell me. Is it for revenge, is that it? You want to get back at Dad?”

“No — Dean, it isn’t about revenge! It’s about living my life like I want to live it!” Sam looks genuinely upset, angry, as if he expected to be over this already.

“You don’t plan on coming back, do you?” Dean has no idea what leads him to that accusation, but there it is, hanging in the air between them, and Sam draws back with a sharp intake of breath, as if frightened by the dizzying, horrifying implications of it — or perhaps by its dizzying, horrifying truth.

“You don’t,” says Dean. “You’re giving me — fuck, Sammy, you’re giving me one fucking year and then wham, out of my life, out of Dad’s?”

“I don’t know, all right?” Sam looks away with a frustrated sigh. “If... I can’t say I want to come back to this, but — I haven’t thought about it, all right? It’s another five years, Dean. I don’t know what’ll be going on.”

“Yeah — well, I do.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Dean, lifting his chin. “I’ll be right here. With Dad. Hunting, helping. Like always.” He punctuates the last words deliberately, designed to dig into Sam and his conscience. It works, to an extent. His brother bows his head, shoulders drooping.

“I can’t do that,” he says. “Look — I’m not like you, Dean.”

“Yeah,” says Dean. “You’re not. And you know why?”

“No,” says Sam, head suddenly snapping up so that his eyes meet Dean’s directly. “No, Dean, tell me — I don’t have a fucking clue. I don’t have a fucking clue how you can stand the things that push me over the edge, how you can throw away any ambition you might’ve had for the sake of a wild goose chase that’s been going on nearly seventeen years and still hasn’t given us a thing. I don’t have a fucking clue.”

Dean pulls himself forward so he’s sitting on the edge of the couch. The sudden movement makes his head pound and his vision blur. “Fuck,” he says, trying to resolve Sam’s two faces swimming before his eyes. “Fuck — and you think I do?” 

He’s not really sure which Sam to aim for, but when he reaches out his fingers find the collar of his brother’s shirt easily, so he just closes his eyes and pulls and leans forward and it ends up working because he feels a mouth against his, startled and half-open and about to form the word _what_ , but Dean has other ideas, and for once Sam doesn’t argue but simply goes along with exactly what his older brother wants. His mouth is warm and wet, and his tongue runs along Dean’s, half hesitant and half eager, and his hand is in Dean’s hair, grasping at it — too short — shaking with fear or excitement or some of both. Dean pulls him in closer, but suddenly Sam slips off his chair and the two of them tumble to the floor together, and the roaring in Dean’s ears is probably not just from the mind-blowing and somewhat terrifying fact that he was just kissing his brother, as much as he would like it to be.

“Shit — Dean, are you all right?” says Sam from above him, and Dean’s going to give him a matter-of-fact _no_ when he opens his eyes and sees Sam’s tense and anxious, if somewhat blurred, face — hair tousled, face flushed, mouth open and red and wet. 

“More or less,” he manages. “You?”

“ _Dean_ ,” says Sam, and that mouth is up against his again, and he finds that he more or less told the truth, after all.

\---

When Dad comes home and sees them looking like they’ve had some sort of fight, he deems it necessary that they get out of the house a bit, stop being closed up with only each other and their respective anger.

Sam’s not entirely sure what it is they have been closed up with, but he’s pretty sure there’s more involved than anger.

Still, he doesn’t object to the new pattern, with Dad sending them out on errands and not really caring when they get back, so long as they do. Within a week, they’re fully aware of all the abandoned pulloffs in the area where they can park the car for a half hour or so while supposedly somewhere in town. Dean’s probably never been this disobedient, Sam thinks with amusement, shirtless in the Impala’s backseat, Dean’s fingers stumbling with eagerness as they work feverishly on unbuckling his belt.

Dean’s more or less recovered by now, his dizzy spells gone, but Sam’s taking far longer. He still occasionally cries out in surprised pain when Dean shoves him too hard, still can’t walk without a limp. Dean mocks him when he favors his right leg too heavily, though, and he’s usually right — under his guidance, Sam forces his body into line, and it heals. Still, it’s not as if Dean doesn’t help, in all fairness — there are moments when Sam’s clambering out of the Impala and Dean wordlessly catches his arm in the kind of assistance he doesn’t notice or think about but helps him keep his balance when otherwise he might’ve stumbled off the curb and hit the pavement painfully. Then, Dean hands him two of their three bags, equal weight, one for each hand, keeping the heavy one with the milk for himself. They’re on the second floor of the building, at the very end of the corridor. Getting up the stairs is a bit of an effort for Sam, but he doesn’t let it show. He lets Dean lead the way down to the door that leads to their little apartment. At the door, Dean turns and reaches up to the back of Sam’s head, angling his face upward and bringing their mouths together for a prolonged moment that weakens Sam’s knees.

And then Dean breaks away, flashing Sam a quicksilver grin before digging out his key to open the door. Sam wipes his mouth and picks his bags up again as the door swings open. Dad looks up at them, nods, and goes back to his newspaper. Sam’s good mood dissipates. Dad always seems to do that to him. He mutters something about _The Grapes of Wrath_ and heads for his and Dean’s room. He doesn’t need to turn to see the way Dean watches him go, shaking his head a tiny bit before turning away.

\---

Something about tonight is driving Dean insane. Maybe it’s the change in Sam the moment they came in the door and saw Dad, the chill that settled over him. Maybe it’s the heady terror of sucking Sam off in the backseat of the Impala, the stain that they’re hoping Dad won’t notice, the way he can still taste his brother at the back of his mouth. Maybe it’s just the heat — Kentucky in summer. Whatever it is, it’s driving him up the walls.

Lying in the room that he and Sam share, only feet away from his brother, sweating beneath the sheets, is torture. He can hear Sam’s breathing, and just that sound is making him hard. He turns restlessly in bed, wanting what he can’t have — because they can’t do this, not now, not just a thin wall away from Dad. He can tell that Sam’s not asleep from the unevenness of his breathing, the way it hitches when he can hear Dean turning over.

After what feels like forever of just lying there, every nerve in his body on fire with want, he hears Sam sit up suddenly. Turning his head, he can see his brother swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing, ridiculous tall. He’s wearing nothing but a T-shirt and boxers. Dean’s dick notices when Dean pretends not to.

“Budge over,” whispers Sam, coming to the side of the bed.

“Dad,” mutters Dean.

“Screw Dad,” says Sam, voice thick with the same need that’s filling Dean’s head and threatening to choke out any voice of reason he’s got left.

Dean budges over.

Sam slips in beside him, and for a moment Dean’s afraid he’s planning to just fall asleep like this, their bodies only just touching, even though Dean’s cock is far harder than is at all reasonable.

Then Sam’s hand slips into his boxers, and he can’t help but let out a half-whispered, half-groaned “ _Sammy_ —” because, oh God, Sam’s ridiculously long fingers are wrapped right around his dick and that feels _so fucking good_.

He can see Sam grinning through the dark as his fingers teasingly run the length of Dean’s cock, and he bucks against his brother’s hand, twisting, burying his head in Sam’s neck and biting down at the tender skin just below his ear. Sam’s hand tightens, and that’s exactly what Dean wants — he inhales sharply, can feel Sam’s own unsteady breathing. His hand presses against Sam’s chest, then trails deliberately downward. He toys with his brother’s waistband for a moment, enjoying the rapid acceleration of Sam’s breathing, before plunging down to grasp Sam’s own cock — which, for the record, is considerably larger than is fair.

“Oh, fuck, _Dean_ ,” gasps Sam, fingers leaving his dick to clutch at his hip, and Dean can’t help but grin.

“Quiet down, Sammy. Dad’ll hear you,” he scolds in a whisper, running his hand roughly the length of Sam’s dick, tight enough that he knows it hurts just a little, fingertips brushing Sam’s balls.

“I can’t,” moans Sam, his back arching. “Not when you — _Dean_ —”

“What?” asks Dean, laughing softly as he lowers his head to nip again at Sam’s neck, hear his brother’s ragged breathing, fingers moving nonstop—he is notoriously good in bed, after all, and maybe guys haven’t exactly been involved before, but that’s no reason to let his standards fall.

“You — just go fuck yourself or something,” Sam groans, blatant irony, twisting just as Dean was moments ago.

Dean laughs again, bringing his mouth close to Sam’s ear. “You know,” he whispers, “I’d rather be fucking you.”

He digs his fingers in right behind Sam’s balls, and his brother comes just like that with another gasping moan, but before he can even recover, Dean pushes himself up onto his knees and presses Sam facedown on the bed, hooking one leg over so he’s kneeling above his brother. Sam reaches out toward the nightstand and a moment later he’s holding up the lube for Dean, whenever it was that he brought that in. Dean takes it with an incredulous laugh that Sam echoes and doesn’t take any longer than he needs to with it, because Sam’s ass is _right there_ and he’s so ridiculously horny that he can barely wait a moment more before thrusting into his brother, deep and hard, and Sam’s so tight and hot around him and here he is, he’s fucking his brother in an apartment in some random town in Kentucky and just the sounds Sam’s making, the way he says Dean’s name, are enough to bring on the most terrifyingly powerful orgasm Dean thinks he might have ever felt. Not that he’s thinking much at the moment — he’s a bit too busy feeling, feeling and doing, and it just might be the best night of his life.

He wakes up the next morning curled around Sammy, narrow lines of sunlight spilling through the blinds, and he buries his face in his brother’s hair and for once in his life simply goes back to sleep.

\---

They don’t get up until late morning. When they enter the kitchen, Dad promptly sends Sam to the laundromat—highly convenient. Sam doesn’t think it might be too convenient. He doesn’t even suspect a thing when Dean’s about to go with him and Dad says no, Dean’s going to stay.

\---

“I don’t want to know,” says Dad, “and I don’t want to hear excuses.”

“Yes, sir,” says Dean.

“Something else I don’t want to hear,” John informs him, still not looking up at Dean. “Anything like what I heard last night. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, sir,” says Dean. His face is burning. He turns to leave.

“And Dean?”

“Sir?”

“You two had better not stain the Impala’s upholstery, that’s all I’ve got to say.”

\---

A year and two months later, when Sam gets on the bus to San Francisco, he doesn’t look back. Still, he can’t help but wonder what might’ve been different, if things stayed the same — if Dean didn’t change, after that one night in Kentucky, if he didn’t close up and shy away except for the occasional frantic sex in the Impala’s backseat, on top of the makeshift blanket he rigged to protect the upholstery.

See, he didn’t really realize he was thinking about staying home until after he stopped thinking it.

But something changed, and something fell apart, and here he is, on his way to Stanford on a scholarship, and Dean’s behind him, and he’s not looking back.

He never will understand quite what it was that changed.


End file.
